Funding for high-speed test
UK automatic test equipment supplier (ATE) Acuid has been awarded a second funding grant from the Scottish Executive. Up to GBP500,000 ($800,000) will be provided to Acuid to develop a high speed pin driver ASIC under Scotland's SPUR PLUS scheme. The funding is to extend the test performance of the company's latest bT144 ATE system up to 2.667Gbits/sec (Gbps), enabling coverage of the existing double data rate (DDR 1 and DDR 2) dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology and the impending DDR 3 format. Infineon has recently selected the bT144 for its Engineering Test department.
Hans Rohrer, Acuid CEO, reports: "The grant money will be used to strengthen our development team to enable the custom ASIC pin driver to be completed in a timely manner to meet market expectations and is expected to be completed in two stages with 1.333Gbps test speeds available in 2005 and 2.666Gbps available in 2006."
The bT144 tester architecture is designed to support speeds up to 2.667Gbps, but this involves the need to develop a unique high speed pin driver. The pin driver is the interface between the tester and the device under test (DUT), whereby the pin driver applies programmed stimuli and gathers responses.
Very few ATE vendors have managed to develop testers that can test devices at speeds greater than 1Gbps. Those who have, have developed large mainframe testers that cost $mn, have a large footprint and require substantial support services such as forced cooling. Acuid say that its custom ASIC pin driver will provide the ability to overturn the conventional design of high speed testers, where large and expensive testers are the norm.
